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Review

Say what you will about Michael Moore,
he’s a riotously successful left-wing carnival barker in a culture that
mostly rewards right-wing carnival barkers. His new circus, Capitalism: A Love Story,
is the film he has been building to for two decades: sprawling and
scattershot, yet with a cumulative force. Moore’s other films focused
on symptoms. This one tackles the disease.

Let’s
start with his conclusion: “Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot
regulate evil”—a jaw-dropper given the sorry history of other economic
systems. But Moore certainly clinches the case against people who say
capitalism and democracy are sibling-close. Jefferson and Adams didn’t
think so. Nor did Jesus, whom Moore redubs in an old Bible picture
turning away a cripple because of a “pre-existing condition.” Moore
relates a half-century of fraud in singsong narration that makes him
seem like Mister Rogers with 200 extra pounds and a Che Guevara T-shirt
instead of a cardigan. But what a figure he cuts. In the final
sequence, he pretends to try to make citizens’ arrests on Wall Street.
On one level: groan. On another: No one else seems
about to make those arrests. The only thing that would scare Wall
Street straight is the image of Michael Moore as the new sheriff in
town.
— David Edelstein